


All the Maids Fair

by tiny_white_hats



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/F, Gen, Revisionist Fairy Tale, Robin Hood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_white_hats/pseuds/tiny_white_hats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riff on the traditional Robin Hood story, starring Faith as a runaway and thief, and Lady Tara Marian of Sherwood, a noble woman who just wants to help people. Medieval AU and a revisionist fairy tale, of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Maids Fair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raktajinos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/gifts).



> Written for raktajinos, because the possible prompt of a medieval Tara/Faith AU caught my imagination and just wouldn't let go. I hope you enjoy it!

The first thing that Faith ever stole was an apple, mealy and green and grabbed right from the front of a marketplace stall. It had been dry and bitter, but somehow, due to the pumping of her heart and the adrenaline rushing through her veins, it had tasted sweeter than summer. It was her first meal in days, and her best in quite some time, so the next morning, tucked away in her robin's blue cloak, Faith slipped through that same market like a whisper with a stolen loaf of bread in her arms. 

Theft made life far easier than it had been since the day she fled her father’s home, seeking freedom the way soldiers ran to war to find themselves glory. All she had wanted was to have room to breath, to escape the constraints of corsets and petticoats and of the rules forced down her throat. Faith had no interest in learning to be oppressed, in learning needlework and company manners and child rearing; she didn’t want to spend a life just waiting to be married off and then being some man’s wife. She wanted to do as she wished and go where she pleased and live a life that she fashioned herself; to change her fate. Faith wanted to live the way she chose and not the way she was told to, so she took her father’s swiftest horse and his strongest hunting bow and taught herself to survive. Survival, she had quickly discovered, was much harder than simply existing. Faith taught herself to ride and to shoot but she was no hunter, so she taught herself to hide and to steal, and, day by day, she learned what survival felt like.

She spent a week camped outside that village, grazing her horse in a grassy clearing and thieving food from the marketplace. She grew more daring with each theft, the rush that stealing each meal created spurring her on to greater heights. Before long, Faith realized that she hungered for the dizzying rush of the steal just as much as for the food itself. 

It was that same hunger that soon drove her to overreaching, to grow reckless and fearless and dumb. Faith grew bolder, leaving alleyway stalls in the market for the safer, brighter stalls of the main thouroughfairs. She was eating as well as she ever had, crafting meals from stolen odds and ends. Theft wasn't about survival anymore, it was becoming a game, stealing from the richest farmers to feed herself. 

It took two weeks before she was caught, but when she was caught, it was in the most spectacular fashion possible. It should have been an easy steal, unremarkable in its simplicity, so Faith reached out a little too far, let her hand linger a little too long, grabbed a roll a little to close to the vendor. The whole time her heart pounded violently inside of her chest like the tolling of a warning bell, and it took all of Faith’s willpower to not cry out in triumph.

She closed her hand around the roll, a golden crescent filled with meat and cheese, and slipped her hand back into her blue cloak slowly and steadily, so as not to attract attention. She was too slow, her hand lying too long in the baker’s field of vision, because a cry of “Thief!” rang out as loud and as heavy as the thump of an executioner’s axe behind her.

“Stop! Thief!” echoed again, cutting through the noise and chaos of the marketplace. Faith ran, quick as an arrow straight from the quiver, from the stall and into the mass of bodies. Her boots hammered on the cobblestones and her cloak flew behind her as Faith ran like a storm through the crowd, rushing as wind and leaving a trail of chaos in her wake, a laugh bubbling madly from her throat all the way.

“In the robin blue hood! Thief! Stop him!”

Faith sped her pace, losing any pursuers she may have had in the crowd and continuing on until she heard no more cries for ‘the man in the robin blue hood.’ Coming to a gasping halt when she reached the very edge of the market, Faith leaned against the wall of the nearest building. Finally, she unclenched her hand around the pastry, revealing a slightly squished crescent molded in the shape of her fist. She wasn’t at all hungry, Faith realized with a start. She didn’t need it at all. 

“Here,” she said gruffly, thrusting the meat pastry at a dirty boy sitting against the wall beside her, begging with an outstretched cap. “You can take this.”

The boy blinked at her for a moment, distrust and hunger both clear in his face, before he threw his hand out like a whip and grabbed the pastry before disappearing into the crowd.

“You went to quite a bit of trouble for that,” came a voice from behind her, “just to give it away. Why is that?”

“Wasn’t hungry. What’s it to you?” Faith snapped, instantly on edge. She voice wasn’t accusing, merely curious, so she wasn’t expecting to see the Sheriff or anyone in his position, but she certainly wasn’t expecting to see a very well dressed woman either. She was blonde haired and fair skinned as out of place in this dirty side street as a rabbit in a pool.

“I was merely wondering,” the wealthy woman continued, in as kind a voice as Faith had ever heard, “what sort of man steals to help others. But, now I realize, you’re not a man at all.”

“And?”

“You caused quite a stir, all for something you gave away. I don’t dispute that that boy needed the food, but did he need it from you?”

“He sure needed it a far sight more than the rich, fattened vendor did,” Faith bit out, defensive and aggressive, adrenaline still pumping her blood like bellows.

“I’ve found that the rich and fat need scarcely any of what they have,” the blonde woman continued gently, smiling warmly at Faith. “While those in need only need a little of what the rich and fat already have.”

“Most of us grow up knowing that,” Faith snarled in reply, scanning the byway for the woman’s guardsmen. No noblewoman travelled without an escort, and certainly not through impoverished areas like this one. 

“Yet even more of us do nothing about that,” the woman agreed, nodding regally at the runaway.

“Well, we can’t all be saints like me,” Faith snapped, close to the end of her rope. “Is there anything you need, milady?” she spat, loading as much sarcasm into the title as she could. “Or will that be all?”

“My name is Lady Tara Marian of Sherwood,” the blonde woman smiled, “but you may call me Tara, if you wouldn’t mind. I truly do prefer it. And I’m just wondering if you’re in need of a traveling companion.”

“Why do you ask milady Tara,” Faith asked suspiciously, regarding the woman with open curiosity for the first time.

“I seem to have misplaced my traveling companions, or my guardsmen--whatever you wish to call them, I suppose—and quite on purpose, I may add. And, as you may notice, I’ve now found myself in dire need of a traveling companion, especially one like you.”

“You got a horse?”

“Stabled nearby,” Lady Tara assured her,” and I’m perfectly capable of riding on my own.”

“Good,” Faith grunted. “Goin’ anywhere in particular or just goin?’”

“I’m happy to go where you lead,” Tara smiled hopefully, gazing earnestly at Faith. 

“Fine. Get your horse,” Faith sighed, unsure how to feel about her own decision. 

“I’m eternally grateful, man-in-the-robin’s-blue-cloak,” Lady Tara thanked her brightly, slackening in relief and letting her shoulders sink down her back. 

“Call me Faith.”

“Well, Faith. How would you care to steal a few more buns from wealthy farmers? There’s no shortage of poor, hungry children in this village.”

“Yeah,” Faith nodded firmly, thinking of the rush each theft gave her and of the joy feeding the boy had given her. “I think I really would.”

fin.

**Author's Note:**

> In hindsight, this wasn't terribly shippy, so I hope that's okay with you, Raktajinos. It was more gen than anything, but the way I envisioned this AU, Tara and Faith definitely end up together, Robin Hood and Maid Marian style. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
